How HRT failed in their intention to become Croatian BBC

Author:
sevenMay 17, 2008

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This one goes to all our foreign readers which would otherwise probably be left out from knowing news of the week in Croatia - Croatian National Television (HRT.hr) bluntly copied British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC.co.uk) website!

The shit hit the fan few days ago and whole Croatian web community got pretty pissed off. HRT spokesman said (in defence to accusations of stealing BBC's design) that HRT wishes to be Croatian BBC, and ok - I absolutely respect that. I also respect their understanding for the need to redesign the site. The old HRT.hr website was 8-10 years old and not something to look at.

But lets get one thing straight - I totally and absolutely disrespect the method of execution of their intentions. Whoever did the production of this monstrosity lacks the proper knowledge and experience... 10 years of experience in web development field at least.

Client is always right, but clients are not web designers (no matter how bad they would want it to be), and our sole professional and moral obligation is to notify client of possible breach in copyright laws, breach in functionality or any kind of possible side-effect that some of their ideas could do to harm the project, harm them self or harm web developers reputation.

Not once, but every time, we ask client - which websites do they like, who are their competitors, who is their role model in business... And based on our previous experience, knowledge, research, strategic planning and comprehensive user tests - we produce results. Results which are specially suited for our client. Not fake copy of website they wish to have.

As our friend Maratz nicely wrote, and I couldn't agree with him more: "This is the embarrassment of the decade for the Croatian web community.".

Updated 20.05. - Big up to our comrades in arms at BBC. And thanks to Alan Connor (co-editor of BBC Internet Blog) who linked to my article, and hey I really don't know how I missed this beauty - http://www.rtl.hu/. It seems that BBC was true inspiration for many "web designers". But, RTL.hu is light AGES ahead of HRT.hr. Whoever did the job, they did it well. There is just a small we-copied-bbc-design fact... but hey. :)

Neven Jacmenović has been passionately involved with computers since late 80s, the age of Atari and Commodore Amiga. As one of internet industry pioneers in Croatia, since 90s, he has been involved in making of many award winning, innovative and successful online project. He is experienced full stack web developer, analyst and system engineer. In his spare time, Neven is transforming retro-futuristic passion into various golang, Adobe Flash and JavaScript/WebGL projects.

13 thoughts on “How HRT failed in their intention to become Croatian BBC”

I would just like to add a fact, who can prove to even BBC build that site?
Maybe they just got template from online and changed around, then did not pay for it 2000$, well is cheaper to go with 120$ and get just files.
What leaves same thing open for other people. I am sure if I just start looking at internet I will find at least dozen websites like that.
It is not easy to copy web and files if you don’t have access to servers, what again will bring if it is BBC servers even secure?